Fact: American grassfed beef ranches have lost most of their profitability in the last few years.

I have found it necessary to rethink encouraging new producers to embrace our regenerative cattle production model. I now feel compelled to warn them to be very careful.  This is because we veteran American grassfed beef producers have recognized that "Greenwashed" foreign product is destroying our margin structure.   

Because I have been publicly vocal on the topic of unlabeled imported grassfed beef, I am now being asked if the Australian fires have lessened the amount of foreign product that we are competing with.

This has been a landmark year for White Oak Pastures. So many good things have happened. These are things that I never would have believed could be possible here.  

Twenty five years ago, I began slowly transitioning our family farm from the industrial cattle farm that it had become. Today we pasture-raise cattle, sheep, hogs, poultry, goats, rabbits, honey, eggs, organic vegetables, and a lot of the other products that the Abundance of Nature provides when her cycles are functioning properly.

Every thinking American has some level of recognition of the decay that has occurred in our rural communities. Almost everyone can agree that this decline is one of the greatest economic disasters of the last half century.

An important message from a Regenerative Farmer to Concerned Consumers:

Do you believe in Climate Change?

Most thinking people do. 

Do you worry about how climate change will impact future generations?  

Most compassionate people do. 

Do you wish that there was an action, that you could do from the comfort of your home, to cease contributing to climate change and even help to mitigate its incredible ongoing damage?  

There is, if you are willing to take action on it.

The Hijacking of the American Food System ain't new, it just continues to get a helluva lot worse.

“You can’t feed the world that way. It’s not scaleable.”

Industrialized agriculture interests argue that factory farming is the only way to feed our growing world population. This mantra is used to justify destructive and inhumane practices that make food artificially cheap and wastefully abundant. More recently, it is the justification by the carbon-emitting agriculture industry to repackage itself as eco-friendly fake meat and “plant-based protein.”

The power of animal impact: a side by side comparison of grazed versus ungrazed pasture

Once upon a time, there was an industrial commodity farmer who had two sons.

The father and his two sons worked together to produce corn and soybeans in a monoculture. They rotated the two crops year after year on their land, with the fields either dedicated to corn, or to soybeans. This sort of farming practice is called a Monoculture, and it flies in the face of the Natural Systems under which Our Earth evolved. Nature Abhors a Monoculture.

Scientists tell us that the planet that we live on was once a lifeless rock, spinning around the sun. It would have been black, and brown, and gray, with a poisonous atmosphere. It would have been incredibly hot on one side, with the water vaporized, and incredibly cold on the other side, with the water frozen solid. And, again, lifeless. [think about the pictures that we see of the surface of Mars, or the moon].

Somehow life began. I won't debate on how that occurred, but the fact that we are here makes it inarguable that it did begin. And that was the beginning of many complex and interrelated cycles that transformed the earth from a lifeless rock.

When Jenni (Harris) stepped into the office and asked if we knew what “gumption” was, I was pleased to say that yes, in fact, I DO know what gumption is. She explained that her dad, Will, was just dumbfounded that she and her sister, Jodi, didn’t know what gumption meant. Will’s experience indicated that the meaning of gumption is lost to the younger generation. My intention for posting Will’s words of wisdom is for there to be a revival, of some sort, of this word, but not just the word. A revival of the character it takes to have gumption, which is the core of what is lacking in this day and age. Ironically, even though Will’s daughters had not heard of gumption, much less what it meant, they both inherited MORE than their fair share from their dad. That is one of the highest...

To the HSUS Sustainable Agriculture Advisory Committee,

Reminder - "US" in HSUS stands for “United States.”